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Sunday, 29 June 2014

Chinook - Closing up

For the left side of the Chinook's interior I had settled on 2 crates and a row of stretchers to carry patients. The trusty "third hand" helps hold the pieces together until the glue has set. I'm not going to bother providing straps and seatbelts.
I must say this Evergreen styrene is a joy to handle and glue. The Tamiya cement I use glues it together in seconds. That may be because the pieces are so small, I dunno.

A few days and some painting later, this last piece is ready to be installed.

I took time to take some pictures of the finished interior, because - once closed - I doubt you'll see much of it, unless I can get some really good light through the little windows.

And now it's time to close the hull up. Out come the trusty clamps and a day of patience.

The seam is big and will require work, but seems manageable (Keep reading, it get's worse)

I didn't go too sparingly on the glue. When you press the parts firmly together, some of the molten plastic will ooze out. Resis the temptation to remove it while still wet. When sanding the seams afterwards, this extra plastic should have filled all the little gaps. This way, you don't need putty anymore.

The last piece goes on the bottom. Getting the alignment right required some - or in some places a LOT of - extra strips of styrene to make it sit flush.

Here's where the overall fit proves worst (so far), so it will need a lot of filling and sanding and even more ... to get it all smooth.

And the worst part : when trying to fit the canopy, something seems off. That's not merely a gap, you can fit and arm or a leg through it (in scale).

I suspect the middle part (the floor sandwiched in between the two hull halves) sits too far forward. This is because there aren't any locator pins or tabs to get positive positioning of the parts. Now the control panel is preventing the canopy to close. Normally, if this were a simple hull not closing, you'd snip off some of the interior bulkheads until it fits, but this specific part sits behind a clear window and will remain visible.
This will require major surgery to get right. We'll addres that next time.